Folks, as the webmaster of OSNews, I'm sorry to report that the OSNews server was hacked early this morning by a l33t haxx0r known only as "osV_rul3z." Although our database server does not appear to have been comprimised, all of the advertising code was deleted and our code was slightly modified to make everyone a premium level subscriber. Rest assured, we are working on the problem and hope to have OSNews restored to its original state as quickly as possible. UPDATE: As everyone suspected, April Fools!

Doesn't look like I am missing much other than the page layout is nicer with the section menu at the top. Not that I ever look at anything other than the main page anyway but it does feel a lot less "cluttered".

"Although our database server does not appear to have been comprimised, all of the advertising code was deleted and our code was slightly modified to make everyone a premium level subscriber. Rest assured, we are working on the problem and hope to have OSNews restored to its original state as quickly as possible"

On a regular sized screen this layout reminds me of an A4 sheet of paper, on my laptop it looks even stranger. If that "osV_rul3z" guy comes around again why not ask him to make the comments wider for people with higher screen resolutions. If that's too much work then how about putting something like a simple pattern on the left and right borders? If I remember my interior design class properly a good scale to use would be 3:5.

BTW. This is an interesting way to advertise the premium subscriptions. Giving peoeple a taste of something usually does help them choose whether they want it or not.

I agree. I do appreciate OSNews making those calls for me and all, but it would be nice to see a non-fixed view for those of us who actually like that. I guess we aren't really worth the extra coding though.

It's meant as a joke - but came to me as a VERY nice surprise, since for about a month your site was impossible for me to open in Opera (tp2) and had to wait ~5min. to open it in firefox - now AGAIN it works perfectly. Dunno what caused this, but I wish myself that from now on every day was a fool's day .
Like the new layout - usually browsing on 200% zoom in 1280 horizontal, so now I won't have to move horizontal scrollbar to reach comments column.

Just my 2 cents - I think I liked the now top bar on the side better. If this is how it normally looks for subscribers, there could be an option maybe as to where it is? I like not having to scroll to the very top of the page to do stuff like check how many votes I have left and go into user prefs, etc.

True I don't very often however you have so much unused space on the sides. Moving it to the side means you can use up unsed space, the user can see more news before scrolling, and if they for some reason want to change prefs they don't have to go to the very top.

Consider though my resolution is 1440x900 so I have a LOT of unused space - not quite sure how it is at lower resolutions (or not widescreen resolutions).

How often do you go into prefs? That would be something I'd be interested in knowing.

Don't you have some kind of stats package that can tell you this? Or, just put log statements in the code for that page?

I never touch prefs, but I go to my user page to review comment history all the time (to see if I've been responded to. It'd be super handy to have the number of responses listed with each post on usercomments.php).

And the new layout sucks for going to said pages. The links are way too small and are farther away from most of the content, which means more scrolling.

I've only been on the internet for like 3 minutes today, and I've already fallen for both this and the Duke Nukem Forever thing on ArsTechnica. I know the pranks are coming, but I guess I'm just that gullible.

Wow man. Nice joke. First I was shocked but then I remembered that it is Aprils fool.
osnews is a great site and provides a lot of info and I think no one will even try to hack it. Its just a Aprils fool joke....

So, you are telling me that they have a way to increase readesrhip and make everyone's experience nicer and that they have explicitly and consciously chosen to degrade everyone's enjoyment of the site to force people to "upgrade" to the layout that doesn't suck?

Where did these people go to business school? You never introduce a feature and then take it back and you never make your user's life miserable.

Cry me a river. I've run plenty of web sites for various groups in the past, and I can say from experience that hosting and bandwidth are dirt cheap.

The problem with sites like this (Slashdot is another good example) is they don't really provide anything new to the public. Just a rehash of stories and articles found elsewhere, or poorly written articles. There's no frackin' way I'd PAY to view this site.

So, get off the high horse, and suck it up. Get some good content on the site that might actually attract advertisers, or start having bake sales. Maybe go find a bandwidth provider/hosting company that doesn't cost so much. I really hope none of the editors here get paid, that'd really depress me.

None of the editors are paid here, no. The money off advertising and subscriptions is used to pay for bandwidth, an admin, and the colocation, pretty much.

I would agree with you that it doesn't make much sense to pay for a site that rehashes others' stories. However, osnews does have 1-3 original stories every week, offers a good way to communicate your thoughts to a given story, and the subscription gives you a faster-loading site (much more important if you are on dial-up), plus it helps maintaining the hardware and software.

However, it begs the question: why are you here and you got in the trouble of registering to get an account if "sites like this" is of no interest to you?

I must add that it would have been very nice if you had continued updating the site through the temporary membership, so that we could have actually seen what it is like to be a member, rather than having only this one new thread, which isn't even a news story, to post in. I suppose it is a small leap of the imagination to imagine the faster updating site being easier to read many threads and stories with, but without having actually used the site a lot while in its members-only form, many people (such as me) won't know if it's really worth upgrading for. Not to say it wasn't an appreciated gesture.

And re:porcel, the inclusion of ads is the biggest difference between this and the members' site, and that is common practice on the internet. The OS News bar on the side is to make the site have a better overal layout, for if it were at the top but the ads were at the side, everyone would bitch and moan about the UI.

Hackers/Codebreakers
all are going crazy, thier
are soo many ways to find
them or punish them, but they still
don't give up, I think they never
felt the same harssness and pain
web-makers and web-hosters feal.